RASKL Rebrand

Tell us about RASKL

 

We are an enthusiastic team of designer-engineers who are working on an eclectic line of design pieces and projects, while developing beautiful bespoke creations for a wide range of clientele.

The team is made up of David Angus, Dan Rose and more recently the addition of Brad Mole, a graduate from Northumbria Uni 3D and Product Design.

We’ve officially been in business for 8 years now although David and Dan have been collaborating on various artistic endeavours since around the turn of the century.

You’ve recently been through a period of business review and reflection.  What triggered this and how have you found the process?

Basically we’d been working very hard and not making much money. We knew we couldn’t do this for ever, despite the nature of the work being very rewarding. So we decided to take a very hard line on assessing the profitability of each new job and set a few rules for ourselves about what type of work we would take on and how to value it, while at the same time truly valuing ourselves and our abilities and realising that people really want to invest in these.

It took us a long time to grow into our roles as designers and to develop the confidence apply the correct prices to our skills.

Another massive change came through our acquisition of a CNC router a couple of years ago. This has opened up a whole new world of design for us and most importantly has reduced the cost of experimentation which is the most important freedom required as a designer.

You have collaborated with Studio Precept in the development of your new brand.  How did the relationship come about?

We move in the same circles and have a mutual respect for each other’s work. Precept had been trying to persuade us to rebrand for years and deconstruction our visual message. We trusted them implicitly but were concerned about the cost and commitment to such a big project.

Explain the process you adopted to tell them about your brand, business objectives, what you envisaged the outcome to be, did they exceed your expectations?

We were really so impressed with their methods for analysing what we stood for and how best to represent this. Despite already having a friendly working relationship, they approached the project with absolute professionalism and took the analysis extremely seriously.

They displayed a profound insight into our company an understanding of our inner workings without actually having any experience in our trade apart from an enthusiasm for design in general.

We had no real mental image of what they might come up with, I certainly had a few desires but we tried to go in with an open mind.

Saying that the results were completely different to anything I expected but our expectations were certainly exceeded.

Did they help to stretch you and suggest things that you’d not thought about initially?

At first I had a real aversion to their preferred approach, it did a lot of things that I’d told myself I wasn’t keen on ‘on paper’ but in practise we’re delighted with the result. It subtly represents sides of the business we were proud of but didn’t want to push as our main selling point and even solved a problem I didn’t realise we had until after the whole rebrand – that we needed to appear more gender neutral both in our products and our branding.

One really interesting tool they had was to spend a short time filming us at work, and interspersed this with clips found on the Internet, along with a suitable soundtrack, to create a video that encapsulated our “Brand Essence,” a short feel-good film that instills the same emotions that we aspire to pass on to any potential customer investing in our work/pieces/brand.

How has the new brand impacted on your business, your motivation and  how others perceive the company?

We immediately come across so much more professionally when handing over any literature or directing people to our website (a big part of this is also due to photographer Richard Kenworthy who does a lot of work with Studio Precept).

We’ve really taken the new brand to heart and I am certainly trying to design around the brand and having the essence of this in mind while developing new products and how they sit in relation to the brand.

This evaluation has also filtered through to your products, you have honed and refined your Agranda extending bench and Integra desk, how have you found that process?

With the Agranda Bench, we’d designed this years before we could make it, it was designed to be produced on a CNC machine but we were limited to hand-crafting the bench in hardwood which was cost prohibitive. The brand analysis coincided with the choice of new materials required for use with the CNC machine, namely high-grade ply and high-pressure laminate. Before the rebrand we might have made some very different choices to ‘Heritage Blue’ and rosewood.

In the case of the Integra desk, in a previous life we may have decided to use a lower-cost fabric alternative to leather, as we perhaps didn’t value ourselves highly enough to push a product of uncompromised quality. Our rebrand has certainly given us the confidence to go for the best materials and manufacture to the best of our abilities.

What are the plans for the future?

We’re planning on getting a few more interesting pieces of machinery to further stretch our abilities and have some really exciting products planned for 2013.

Further down the line we’re aiming to establish a presence in the international design world, both at exhibitions and in design led shops.

At the very least if we can keep on doing what we’re doing while maintaining our integrity we’ll be happy!

RASKL

Studio Precept

Images above by Richard Kenworthy Photography 

Trade Show Marketing Check List

Make sure you get the most out of exhibiting at a trade show by following these handy marketing tips:

Email signature

A really simple thing to do and really effective! Make sure you have a sign off signature with your name, job title and contact telephone number to end every email.  Always add details of your next event, exhibition, or direct people to your e-store with a descriptive message that stands out and catches the eye.

Press release

Send out a press release to your press contacts informing them that you will be attending a trade- show; include dates, your stand number, your product details and an image.  Remember that monthly magazines require information 3 months in advance for inclusion in publications.  Good product photography both as a cutout and in situ should be available.  Also include information on whether your product is available to the press to borrow for photo shoots.  Follow up with a phone call or email.

Personal invitations

Press and customer invitations – do personally invite selected people to come and view your work on the stand, including past customers and contacts, current ones and people that you’d like to forge a relationship with such as buyers, journalists, independent stores, interior designers or stylists.

Twitter

Include short updates on twitter of how you are preparing for the show, what products you will be exhibiting, include picture links, hash tags, links to your website and/or Facebook page or blog and ask people to retweet.  Also include the Twitter handles for the venue / trade show you are exhibiting at and include handles for other people you might want to see your tweets.

Get involved with Forward Friday too as many people retweet you if you include them in your suggestions and the knock on effect is gaining more followers.

Tweeting can be done daily over the week and weekend and it’s easy to update on the move.  Most people use Twitter between 8am-7pm Mon – Sun.  If you find you get sucked in to Twitter and end up wasting time updating on a daily basis you can use Hoot Suite to schedule tweets.  This method is particularly useful during exhibition time when you might be busy talking to visitors to your stand, schedule tweets to go out throughout the day including pictures of your stand and the exhibition.

   

Facebook

Most people use Facebook after 7pm in the evening during the week and over the weekend.  It makes sense to post things during this time so your status updates show up in timelines.  It’s easy to update on the move with more information and involvement than Twitter.  So if you have a good group of friends on Facebook invite them to your exhibition through the Events button and post about it on your timeline.

Linked In

Linked In is a great platform to connect with your professional audiences, commissioners, buyers, journalists and update / email them with information about your trade show.  Update people on your activity and email them through the Linked In platform.

Blog

It’s nice to elaborate on certain topics with a more in-depth piece, which can include a mixture of images and text or just images with captions.  You need to be realistic on how often you want to commit to blogging – if you blog twice a week will you have much to say?  If you blog once every other week you can update people on what you’ve been up to if it’s been a particularly busy time.  Ensure your blog is well written and interesting. Direct people to your blog via the platforms above and consider doing a blog post midway through your trade show to update your audiences and give them a sneaky peek at your stand, it may encourage them to come and have a look!

E-bulletin / e-newsletter

E-bulletins differ slightly from blogs in that you are sending directly to the inbox of opted in customers an interested parties.  As with blogs, don’t send ebulletins if you don’t have anything new and interesting to say.  You don’t want an email from your address to become an instantly deletable email.  Make sure the subject field is something captivating inducing curiosity to open and read the ebulletin.  You could send a series of e-newsletters over a period of time leading up to your exhibition / trade show offering a new slant and new information each time.

Website

Update regularly with your new products, exhibitions you are involved in and trade shows you are attending.  Updating images every few month on the home page will keep it looking fresh.  It is especially important that your website is up and running and current when attending a trade show.  Remember to Include trade show information, links through to booking/ticketing and your stand details so people know where to find you!